The Copy Book

Filioque

It started as an honest mistake, became a diplomatic standoff, and brought down an Empire.

Part 1 of 2

1453

King Henry VI 1422-1461, 1470-1471

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© Сайт Новгородской епархии (website of the Eparchy of Velikiy Novgorod). Used with permission.

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Filioque

© Сайт Новгородской епархии (website of the Eparchy of Velikiy Novgorod). Used with permission. Source
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Clergy at the 11th century Cathedral of St Sophia in Velikiy Novgorod, Russia, recite the Symbol of Faith during the Divine Liturgy, the service of holy communion. They are gently waving over the priest’s head a cloth that represents the soft wind of the Holy Spirit, ‘Who proceedeth from the Father’. To this day, the Eastern Churches recite the Creed as it was agreed at the Council of Constantinople in 381, and as it was subsequently reaffirmed at every Council of the undivided East and West – without the offending addition ‘and the Son’.

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Introduction

In 680, English bishops gathered at Hatfield sent Pope Agatho a signed copy the Creed in which they declared their belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’. They would have been horrified to learn that this little phrase was not in the original. Unfortunately, some at Rome had invested so much of their credibility in it that they were prepared to go to any lengths to save face — even if it meant bringing down the Empire.

IN 587, a provincial Synod in Toledo recited the Creed approved by the Council of Chalcedon in 451,* and declared that the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’. Apparently, the bishops quite genuinely thought this was the Creed as originally composed, for they repeated Chalcedon’s declaration that the Creed must never be altered. So when English bishops at the Synod of Hatfield echoed these words in 680,* they too had no idea that ‘and the Son’ – in Latin, filioque – had slipped in unauthorised.*

Unfortunately, the phrase was halfway around the world before the truth had its boots on. Eastern bishops brandished the original Greek text, and in 810, Pope Leo III deposited two silver shields inscribed with the unadulterated Creed at the tomb of St Peter. At a Council in Constantinople in 879, Patriarch Photius and Pope John VIII forbade changes to the Creed in perpetuity, censuring filioque by name as an ‘invented phrase’.*

But Pandora’s box was already ajar.*

Continue to Part 2

The Creed was first ratified by the Council of Constantinople in 381. As it expanded on a creed issued by the Council of Nicaea in 325, in ancient times (as also today) both were often called ‘the Creed of Nicaea’. The bishops at Chalcedon in 451 read out both creeds, and declared them inviolable. See The Creed for the full text.

See our post The Synod of Hatfield. When Pope Agatho communicated the English bishops’ decisions at the Synod to the Council of Constantinople later that year, he removed ‘filioque’ from the Creed.

St Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, might have told them, as he was a Greek schooled in Constantinople; but it was his word against the Synod of Toledo and the so-called Athanasian Creed, which was in fact not written by St Athanasius of Alexandria (?296-373) but circulated widely in sixth-century Gaul under his name and reputation. So the English bishops can hardly be blamed.

St Photius wrote of those who repeated ‘filioque’ in all innocence: ‘if they expressed anything badly, for some reason now unknown to us – if no question was put to them, nor did anyone call on them to research the truth – nonetheless we enrol them among the Fathers, as if they had not said it.’ Letter XXIV.20 (PG 102 col. 813). Photius was the Patriarch at the time of the invasion by Rus’, when the pagan navy was turned back by a miracle. See our post Our Lady’s Mantle.

See Pandora’s Box.

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